Adelaide Motorsport Competition brings again recollections of Australian Grand Prix

A long time earlier than the Netflix collection Drive to Survive delivered Method One legions of latest supporters, tens of hundreds of motorsport followers would descend on Adelaide for the Australian Grand Prix.

Between 1985 and 1995, the race helped enhance South Australia’s international occasions credentials because it hosted the ultimate spherical of the world championship.

For world champion Damon Hill, the occasion proved to be the positioning of victory and defeat.

He is returned to Adelaide for the primary time since successful the town’s remaining grand prix in 1995 for the reborn Motorsport Competition and has fond recollections of racing within the metropolis’s east parklands.

“Both the championship was determined, and we got here right here to complete off the season, through which case afterwards we would have a celebration,” Hill mentioned.

“In any other case, if it [the world championship] hadn’t been determined and it was a really thrilling method to end the season.”

Loading…

Hill was on the improper finish of it in 1994, when he was concerned in one of many sport’s most notorious title deciders with Michael Schumacher.

“Me or Michael may have received the championship, all we needed to do was beat one another,” Hill mentioned.

The championship was settled after the pair collided, placing them each out of the race and handing the German the crown.

“There was a little bit of a hoo-ha, I believe that’s a method of placing it,” Hill mentioned.

“Loads of very upset folks, however every time there’s upset folks there are additionally different folks celebrating. So, Germany was celebrating their first ever Method One world champion.”

The 1994 Method One season was overshadowed by the deaths of three-time world champion Ayrton Senna and Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger on the identical weekend, and allegations Schumacher’s crew was dishonest.

It was the German’s first of seven Method One world titles, however he hasn’t been seen in public since a snowboarding accident in 2013.

Hill’s Adelaide victory in 1995 got here in entrance of greater than 200,000 folks, which stays a single day attendance report for an Australian Grand Prix, earlier than he grew to become world champion the next 12 months.

By then, the Australian Grand Prix had moved to Albert Park in Melbourne the place it should stay till not less than 2035.

New followers want to know the game

The now-pundit for Sky Sports activities F1 says the scale of Method One’s latest viewers and fan progress, spurred by Drive to Survive, has shocked him and that it is “good and unhealthy”.

“They’ve drawn in new folks, younger folks to the game, however they have been drawn in by the drama of Drive to Survive,” Hill mentioned.

“Now they have to know the game. And so, the sporting aspect of it isn’t fairly as straight ahead and perhaps not fairly so apparent.

Hill was amongst Method One personalities who have been attending this 12 months’s Adelaide Motorsport Competition, alongside drivers Valtteri Bottas and Liam Lawson, long run crew principal Guenther Steiner and commentator David Croft.

Primarily based in Victoria Park, a bit of the previous F1 observe was used for high-speed demonstrations, with greater than 200 automobiles taking part.

“It is simply rising 12 months in, 12 months out,” mentioned seven-time Bathurst 1000 winner Craig Lowdnes.

“Phrase of mouth is admittedly robust. The general public right here in South Australia love this kind of occasion.”

The Adelaide Motorsport Competition was scrapped in 2019 and re-established following the 2022 state election, with further taxpayer funding from the Labor Authorities.